Shikamaru Bakes A Birthday Cake
by GypsysGift
Summary: team 0 arrives in Konoha just in time for Anna's birthday. In this cracky one-shot, Shikamaru attempts  and fails numerous times  to bake a cake for Anna...


Anna b-day fanfic

_29th June 2010_

A figure could be seen on the hilltop in the distance. It was short, and appeared to be doing some sort of victory dance, making its hair fly around crazily. It began to speak, quietly at first, but then growing ever more exited, high-pitched and loud before finally ending in a deafening shriek that could be heard for miles around.

"It's my birthday in three hundred and sixty-four days!"

…

_Nearly a year later, 27th June 2011_

Upon that same hilltop stood that same figure. It was slightly taller now, though not by much - it hadn't grown greatly over the past year. Again, it began to speak, culminating in the cry: "It's my birthday tomorrow!"

Yes, it was Anna, a ninja from the Village Hidden in the Lights, or Akarigakure no Sato. She was understandably excited; after all, it was her birthday the very next day. Most ninja from other hidden villages did not celebrate their birthdays much, only really paying attention to the important ones about every ten or so years, but in Akarigakure, birthdays were a completely different story. At least, they were for the members of Team 0 and anyone who knew them. This was mostly due to Anna. She was (to put it lightly) _obsessed_ with her birthday, and this had an effect on anyone who spent more than ten minutes in her company - namely her entire team plus Evie, someone who had made Chûnin a few years before them.

But then someone interrupted her daily dance (yes, she did it every day, counting down to her birthday) with a message from the Akarikage, Kishimoto Masashi. Team 0 were to be sent on a diplomatic mission to Konoha for some reason - but really it was probably because the village leader had got bored of Team 0 and their annoying pranks and decided to send them as far away as he could! Their beloved leader didn't exactly get the reaction he'd been desiring – on hearing that they'd be going to Konohagakure, the home of three quarters of the teams love interests, the already slightly over-exuberant teenaged (well mostly) girls all started making a sound that was exactly 10% obnoxiously loud chatter, 50% inhumanely high-pitched squeeing, 15% anger that a certain read-headed ninja from Suna would not be there and 25% frantic screaming when one member of the team (later everyone said it was Clare, but it was most likely Immy) suddenly realized that they'd be in Konoha for Anna's birthday. Of course not one of the members of Team 0 thought to ask why it was necessary to go on a diplomatic mission to Konoha given that Konoha was one of only two hidden villages that Akarigakure was on good terms with (of course, _nothing_ to do with Team 0).

And so, the four team-members plus Sulu-sensei (though no-one knew why he was there) and Oreo-Cookie Clare's nin-bunny (everyone knew why he was there) began the seven day journey to Konoha, which they ended up accomplishing in nine and a quarter hours with help from two boxes of Lucozade tablets and nine mini-packets of Haribo. The large crowd gathered by the gates (mostly due to Clare and Arwen's love of mass-texting) all groaned slightly as they caught sight of the four sugar-high girls, an equally sugar-high rabbit and a very distressed-looking Sulu-sensei. The minute they caught sight of the village gates, Immy began shrieking even louder than before. "Anna! Anna! it's time to put on the badge we made you!" Anna groaned as Immy produced a home-made badge which was covered in multi-coloured scribbling which read something along the lines of 'Happy Birthday Anna-kins!'

"No really, do I have to? I mean, 'Anna-kins'?" she asked, exasperatedly.

"Yes." Came the firm reply, and she dutifully put on the badge, albeit reluctantly.

All the Konoha ninja barely suppressed their sniggers as they could finally see what Anna was wearing. They had never seen such a pathetically sweet yet ridiculously stupid object before. Yes, they were talking about the badge which Immy and her _wonderful_ artistic skills had made. Actually, normally she was amazing at art, it was just - when she is sugar-high, nothing turns out for the best…

But anyway, the Konoha ninja were barely suppressing their sniggers (save for Sasuke and Neji, who were stoic as ever). Shikamaru, however, having met the girl a few years earlier in the Chûnin exams, suddenly realised the import of what the badge said.

'Happy Birthday Anna-kins'

Birthday.

_Kuso! _He mentally berated himself for forgetting that fact and deduced that Anna would kill him horribly and painfully, maybe even setting her sheep-I mean friend, Immy, on him if she ever found out. Now that would be harsh. She wouldn't do that to him… would she? So, as she would undoubtedly find out, he decided that he needed to do something to make it up to her. Maybe a cake. Yeah, a cake was a good idea - everyone likes cake.

And so, Shikamaru went about making a cake. But the troublesome thing was, genius as he was, he didn't actually know how to make one. So he decided to go to expert sources. Thus, here he was, standing outside Ichiraku's Ramen, in the hopes that they knew how to make a cake.

"Well, you need flour, sugar, eggs, sugar, chocolate, sugar, baking powder, sugar, a pinch of salt, sugar, and… oh yeah, some sugar!" Ayame offered him this tip - it wasn't her fault really - she was a little tipsy from going to a friend's eighteenth, and this was all she could really manage to say. Unfortunately, the pineapple-haired ninja didn't know any better on the subject of cake-baking, and so he set about making it the way Ayame told him.

Suffice to say, it was a failure. He didn't know how to use the oven, and he had had to resort to asking Sasuke for a Fire-style nin-Jutsu to cook it (he did know that much) which just ended up with a frazzled lump of charcoal. And when he'd made another batch of 'cake mix', with the intention of asking Sasuke to go easy on the inferno, his ninja-shaped oven had been stolen from him by Anna's friend Clare, so he was left ovenless. He had three options:

Give up and just pretend he'd forgotten Anna's birthday – danger level, ridiculously high, Anna would surely kill him, or worse, set the Squim on him. No, that one wasn't an option.

Keep trying to bake a cake by himself, and serve Anna a heap of blackened crumbs which would probably break all her teeth out – danger level, perilous, Shikamaru didn't know much about girls but he did know that they were none of them particularly fond of eating huge lumps of ash.

Sacrifice everything he held dear, his honour, his pride and every ounce of self-esteem he had to his name , and ask for Asuma-Sensei's help – Danger level, relatively low when it came to the potential risks of Anna killing him, but exactly how much was Shikamaru willing to lose?

Apparently, a lot. At least that must have been the case, considering less than ten minutes after the idea popped into his head, Shikamaru found himself on the other side of the village explaining his predicament to his long-time Shogi partner. Shogi is a little like chess, and when you play chess, the best thing you can possibly have is a good poker face. That was almost definitely why Shikamaru kept beating Asuma, because Asuma's was terrible. He tried, he really did try, but the sight of a very bedraggled Shikamaru standing on his doorstep complete with yellow-ish cake mix all over his fishnets and a dusting of flower on his sandals, was just too much for him.

Thirty minutes later, Shikamaru finally got Asuma to stop laughing(with the help of seven buckets of icy water and copious threats involving Asuma's being tied up inside a dark room with nothing to keep him company apart from the audiobook version of Make Out Paradise which Shikamaru, considerate as he was, would loop just for Asuma's enjoyment) Once he'd sobered up enough to be talk able to, the two shinobi prepared for a battle of huger proportions than they'd ever fought before.

Within hours, the house was filled with the unmistakable odour of burned birthday cakes, charred icing and incinerated hair (Asuma accidentally stuck his head just a _little too far _into the oven). The two Leaf ninja were slumped on the floor, the signs of their intense battle with an army of eggs, flour and copious amounts of sugar all over their faces and bodies. The stench of their attempts to produce an acceptable birthday present lingered in their nostrils and neither of them had the energy nor the will to continue with attempt number 7777769.59 which lay abandoned by the sink. Both Asuma and Shikamaru were so exhausted that they barely noticed the sound of the door opening and shutting.

"Asuma, you in?" Came Kakashi's voice down the hallway. Asuma produced some kind of sick-sounding groan in response. "I brought that Yukie Fujikaze box set you were asking about, Kurenai happened to mention that you were going to watch it with her tonight – Kami what have you done!" Kakashi's jaw dropped as he unwittingly walked straight into the recently vacated battlefield. His black eyes widened, the grip he had on the DVD's in his hand loosened and they spilled across the floor, but he barely noticed. All he could do was stand and stare at the carnage that lay before his eyes. "Wh-wh-what have you two been _doing?"_ he stammered, not particularly wanting to know the answer. Asuma was able to summon enough energy to raise his head and whisper hoarsely – "trying to bake … a cake…. For Anna….. her birthday," before he slumped back down again, wheezing slightly.

Catching sight of cake number 7777769.59, Kakashi's face went from green to purple to blue to a disgusting greyish-yellow colour before reverting to its normal state. "You two call this – this – thing, a cake?" nodding sadly, his fellow shinobi nodded. "It was the best we could do," Shikamaru moaned, his voice wavering. Kakashi rolled his eyes, counted to ten and prayed he wouldn't either scream like a girl or faint at the sheer sight of the kitchen in front of his 'comrades'. "Well," he began slowly. "If this wasn't a Naruto fanfic and if there wasn't the imminent threat of Immy hitting Clare very,very,very, VERY, hard for trying to put references from other Anime into Anna's birthday story, I'd sat you two were getting a death note." He watched with amusement as his two friends faces went from confusion to disappointment as they finally processed exactly what he'd just said. "But seeing as a) this is a Naruto fanfic, b) it is Anna's birthday present and c) Clare's been having a rough few days and Immy hitting her wouldn't help, there's only one thing I can do," with that he inserted a hand into one of the more expansive of his vest pockets. Shikamaru and Asuma watched with mounting excitement as Kakashi withdrew his hand, expecting him to be holding a magic cake making scroll or at least the secrets to Team 0's patented Cupcake No Jutsu. To their utter surprise and mild disappointment( we make goooood cupcakes!) ,however, Kakashi pulled out a bright yellow (and slightly frilly) apron which he proceeded to tie around his waist. They didn't have long to stare though, because as soon as he'd double knotted the apron-strings, Kakashi began to bellow orders at the top of his voice, which Asuma and Shikamaru began hurrying to carry out, especially considering the number of swear-words Kakashi was capable of getting into a perfectly normal sentence.

Two hours later, Asuma's house was filled with the fragrant smells of vanilla, cocoa powder and chocolate buttercream frosting. Shikamaru lay slumped on the kitchen floor once more, only this time, the fatigue was from the amount of effort he'd put into succeeding (or at least, helping Kakashi to succeed) at something as opposed to earlier, where he and Asuma had been drowning in the sheer depths of their failure. The little piece of baking masterpiece Kakashi had managed to whip up was a three tier cake with a rainbow of different coloured icing and dainty little iced patterns all over it. Right at the top, Kakashi had managed to draw with one of those fiendish inventions known as icing-pens, the sun/lights/warp-engines of the SS enterprise/freaky looking explosion that was the symbol of Akarigakure. Shikamaru was shaken from his fatigue, however, by a loud, incredibly high-pitched SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE! that came from the general direction of the door. Unbeknownst to him, the whole entirety of the Konoha twelve plus Gaara (Clare had let Arwen use her brand new phone Jeremy to call to Suna to invite him to Anna's party), the Godaime Hokage and a few Akatsuki members, though everybody was just trying to pretend that they weren't there – had managed to cram themselves into Asuma's tiny house. In the middle of all those people, sandwiched tightly between Sasuke and Clare, was Anna, who Shikamaru suspected had been the source of the Squee.

"Wow Shika, you made this cake for me? All by yourself?" she gasped, eyes shining. Shikamaru cast a desperate look up at his friends: Naruto guffawing with laughter, Lee declaring how they'd all have to run sixteen laps of the village after they'd eaten their cake to retain their youth, and Sasuke and Neji who, to everyone's amazement were smiling quiet little smiles to themselves. (though in all fairness to our two stoics, Clare was keeping Sasuke well plied with Klondike bars and Immy had almost definitely using her Smile Or Die tactic on Neji). Well clearly none of them were going to be any help whatsoever, Shikamaru thought to himself.

"Happy Birthday Anna." He began slowly. "But about the cake, yeah no, not quite," Anna looked up at him with eyes filled with confusion bordering on murderous. "What do you mean not quite?" she asked quietly, eyes sliding past Shikamaru to Kakashi who was whistling innocently in a corner, despite the fact he'd forgotten to take off his bright yellow apron. Shikamaru took a step back as Anna went to move forward. Teenaged girls, he thought to himself, _they are such a drag. _


End file.
